Novelist and NEA Literature Fellow Peng Shepherd latest book is the speculative mystery The Cartographers. Those of us who love maps think they are magical. In Shepherd’s book, this magic isn’t metaphorical; The Cartographers has, at its heart, not only the wonder and possibilities of map-making, but a map that is actually magical and becomes a dangerous obsession for a group of cartographers. In this podcast, Shepherd talks about her fascination with maps, the really cool phenomenon of phantom settlements and how they inspired the book’s premise, the process of writing a book with two timelines and seven narrators, her love of speculative fiction, and the challenges of writing “the second book.”
The three writers recommended during the podcast by Peng Shepherd are R. F. Kuang, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Fonda Lee
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